


House Call

by theunknownfate



Category: Princess and the Frog (2009), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Gen, Kink Meme, Prompt Fill, Prostitution, Tarot, shadow sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 11:41:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theunknownfate/pseuds/theunknownfate





	1. Chapter 1

“Eeeevenin’, ma’am.” The voice was a dark, rich purr, made to twine around the senses like a warm wisp of smoke or a sun-soaked black snake. Sylvia wasn’t used to being seduced. It sort of defeated the purpose. 

He had come to the door like any other guest and she had been taken aback by his appearance, which brought Walter out to peek. He wasn’t used to his mother flinching at anything. This guest was tall and thin, dressed in what looked like formal wear with exotic hints of savagery, a necklace with fangs, and a skull and crossbones on his hat. There was such an impression of darkness that it wasn’t until the man smiled toothily that either of them realized he was black. Walter thought maybe that’s what had given his mother second thoughts, but when the man’s magical velvet voice spoke, she recovered quickly and let her robe hang off one shoulder.

“You must be new in town,” she said and he took off his hat to bow. That flustered her even more. Walter was just impressed with the shock of hair that the hat had been containing. Without it shadowing his face, the man’s eerie violet eyes seemed sharp and hungry. 

“I’m a man of simple pleasures, darlin’,” he said. “But even those aren’t free. You would know that better than most, I imagine.” He winked at her and while she struggled to decide if he was making fun of her, he walked to sit at the kitchen table. His shadow seemed a step behind him, stretching out to darken much more of the wall than should’ve been possible from such a skinny man.

“Well, um, we aim to please.” Sylvia had never been as good at the sweet talk aspect as she would’ve liked. She found herself sitting across from him and heard a chair scoot as Walter was suddenly sitting there too. The boy wasn’t supposed to be there! She started to complain, but then the cards were being shuffled, blurs of color and the gentle whirring of stiff paper drowning out whatever it was that she had been going to say. 

“You can’t get something for nothing,” the man said. His voice seemed to drain the light in the room, absorbing it like black swamp water. His shadow wriggled gleefully. “And everybody wants something more than anything.” He spread the cards out in a perfect arc. 

“You don’t have money, do you?” Sylvia asked. 

“Is that what you want me to pay you?” He smiled at her and she hesitated. “Consider, now.” He held up a long, thin finger and his voice went back the intoxicating molasses drawl. “Careful what you wish for.” Her mouth opened and then closed and she looked at the cards on the table. “You know what I’m here for,” he went on. “And I know what you want. No more of this.” He gestured at the tiny apartment. “No more of that.” He nodded at Walter. 

“Past. Present, and future,” the man said. "Pick three." Sylvia did and the first card showed a woman crying as a man walked away. “Whose fault is it that you’ve come to this? Poor, pretty girl in the big city. It ain’t right what they did to you.” 

The second card made Walter look away. It was a thing made of bodies, arms and legs and other things. He looked at the wall instead. The man’s shadow was much closer to his mother’s shadow than the man actually was to her. It looked like it was reaching for her. The last card was flipped over and Sylvia gasped. 

“No more of the smug little smiles and the disgusted eyes whenever you go out,” growled the man. “No more bite marks and sticky sheets. No more wadded up dollar bills that are spent before you even smooth them out again. No more looking into those same dark eyes and knowing you’ve fucked up. You’ll be free of all that. Free as a bird.” His voice lightened, almost laughing. “That’s what you want isn’t it? To never have to worry about all that again?” Walter risked a peek at the card. From Sylvia’s vantage point it looked like a woman from behind with her hands upraised, surrounded by clouds under a bird’s outspread wings. From his, she looked liked she was lying face down in puddles of blood beside a dead bird. 

“Mama-“ he whispered, but she wasn’t listening. 

“Is that worth a little of your time?” the man asked. He held out his hand for the cards and when Sylvia handed them back, his long fingers closed around hers like a Venus flytrap and his shadow swooped down onto hers like a hawk.


	2. Chapter 2

She was on her back on the table, shaking it back and forth with her violent motions. Walter didn’t know if the legs would hold up under whatever she was doing. Her back arched up and she groaned a deep guttural sound that shouldn’t have come from a woman. Her hips lifted, pumping at nothing. Her knees spread wide and her toes clutched at the edge of the table as the sounds she was making rose into yips. 

Her hands hadn’t been still the whole time. Her fingers made clawing motions in the air over her head. She yanked on her own hair, bit her own knuckles, wailed and whimpered and made the table bounce and buck underneath her. Nothing visible was touching her, but there were two shadows on the wall where there should’ve been only hers. 

Walter couldn’t bear to look and the man had pulled him into the next room, leaving his shadow to do whatever it was doing behind them. The noise already had the neighbors pounding on the walls. It sounded like drumbeats.

“You haven’t turned your cards over yet,” the shadow-less man said, no longer smirking and seductive. He was serious now and Walter didn’t remember picking three cards, but there they were, tight in his trembling hands. 

“I don’t want to,” he said. He tried to give them back but the man caught his wrist. 

“Your hand has been dealt,” he said. “It’s yours whether you look or not.” He leaned in so that only his evening-purple eyes were visible over the tops of the cards. Walter shook his head again. The man looked at him, with something that might’ve been sympathy a long time ago. 

“You can’t really want nothing else,” he said. “You can’t really feel that this is the life you are supposed to have.” He plucked the first card free and turned it over to show it to Walter. It was a little boy reaching out into a black void, nothing reaching back. “All your miserable little life you’ve known it. That something was wrong, that something was missing.”

“Stop it!” Walter begged. In the next room, Sylvia’s cry stuttered into a mantra of grunts. The sound of the table scooting against the floor kept time. The man only pried the second card free and turned it over. It was the same boy inside a cage, inside another cage, inside another, inside another. This boy knew better than to reach out, but he clutched the bars tight in small hands. 

“It’ll get worse before it gets better,” the man told him. “But it will get better. You know what you want and what you need.” His fingers teased over the edge of the last card. “We can change your future ‘round to suit you. Make your wish, son. What do you want to see on this card?” Sylvia suddenly screeched like a bird getting its wings torn off. 

“I want you to go away!” Walter snapped, trying to wrestle free. The man’s eyes narrowed. “Go away and leave us alone!” The man lashed out with his free arm. Walter had already braced to be hit, but instead got a faceful of bright powder. The room reeled as all the shadows in the room were sucked into a black aura around the man. All that was visible in the darkness were his eyes, but there was a flicker of something like a skull before he vanished, taking the shadows with him. 

The last card fell to the floor and landed face up. It vanished in a puff of smoke, but not before Walter saw the symmetrical shape of two hands clasped. The kitchen was quiet except for his mother’s harsh, labored breathing. He had heard that sound before, so he hurried to bed so he wouldn’t be there when she remembered she hadn’t gotten any cash. 

He huddled in under his blanket, imagining shadows coming for him, invisible in the dark. The neighbors had stopped pounding, so there was no sound now except his heartbeat. When he heard Sylvia swear softly, but with feeling, he knew she would be all right and let his eyes close. He tried not to think of the last card, but ended up clasping his hands together to see what it would feel like.


End file.
